Marie Bashkirtseff Gallery Update

Marie Bashkirtseff Gallery Update

July 19, 2013

With a generous image contribution from Fonthill Press, we are happy to announce that ARC has revamped the Image Gallery of Ukrainian painter Marie Bashkirtseff (1858-1884). Fonthill Press recently published the Journal of Marie Bashkirtseff translated and edited by Katherine Kernberger. There has also been a significant biographical update to the page, that has been supplied as well.

Marie's devotion to beauty and the fine arts defined the focus of her brief, prolific life. In 1877 - against the wishes of family and the orders of her doctors - she moved from the temperate climate of Nice to Paris in order to study painting. She enrolled in the Academie Julian, the only art school in Paris at that time accepting women; during this period Marie also began attending meetings of "Le Droit des Femmes," the leading society of the emerging French feminist movement. At the Academie, Rodolphe Julian, the founder, and Tony Robert-Fleury took an immediate and great interest in her talent, and of the overwhelming force of her fiercely determined self. Simultaneous to her artistic development, Marie published articles regarding the Rights of Women, writing under the nom de plume of Pauline Orell. Always, in every endeavor, Marie seemed engaged in an inexorable battle with passing time, sensing from early on that her own time was short. In spite of her personal wealth and illness, she worked tirelessly - eight to twelve or more hours a day, virtually for the remainder of her life. After a relatively short period of study, M. Julian asked Marie to paint a large canvas depicting his Academie, for submission to the Salon. Her painting, L'Atelier Julian (The Studio), has long been regarded as a masterwork of La Belle Epoque.